Migrating from one email platform to another application is now very common. Some users are switching from paid email clients to free applications, such as Outlook to Thunderbird and vice versa. Among them, the queries migrated from Google to Office 365 attracted half of the business.
Many organizations are moving their full business collaboration applications from Google to O365 Online. Therefore, whenever an email client change occurs, a technology is required that can export the old data to a new application. Therefore, in this article, we will show you a complete guide that can move Google data (G Suite / Google application) to MS Office 365 inbox.
Technology to import data from Google to Office 365
The IMAP protocol provides a free method to migrate from GSuite Gmail to Office 365, but this has limitations because it is not easy to support calendars or address books. For small groups of users, this may be acceptable, but as you expand to larger projects, this constraint becomes a problem. Office 365 has Google built-in migration options using the IMAP protocol.
The migration speed may be slow, it is recommended that you perform a test migration to provide an estimate.
You can use the third party tool to import Google into Office365. Choosing the right tool is an important decision and there are some differences to consider. For example, some tools provide a Google Docs license to OneDrive.
The complete migration method using IMAP will be presented below.
Import Google Apps to Office 365 step by step
There are two possible ways for IMAP migration, namely Exchange Administration Center (EAC) and PowerShell. PowerShell commands are very complicated and you need to be careful when using them. Therefore, we choose the EAC method to import Gmail emails into O365 webmail. Follow the instructions below to complete the activity.
Step 1: List all mailboxes
The first step is to list the mailboxes to import into the G Suite domain. To do this, follow these steps.
Note: The size of the list must be 10MB.
- Log in to the Admin Console of Google G Suite.
- Click on Users to view the user list.
- The window will display the id of all users. Note the email address for later use.
- After noting the user’s email address, log into the O365 Management Center.
- Click on User >> Active User.
- Select the details on the “Username” column.
- Next, start the Excel application and create a table as shown in the image. You need to create three columns, which are email address, username and password. In the “Email address” column, write all the user IDs associated with O365. Then, type the user’s login name and password in the “Username” and “Password” columns respectively.
- After completing the Excel worksheet, save it in CSV format.
Step 2: Connect your Gmail account to O365
It is mandatory to establish a connection between O365 and the Google account to transfer emails. To establish a network, you need to perform the following instructions.
- Go to the Exchange Management Center.
- Click Recipients >> Migrate.
- You need to select the migration endpoint by clicking More Options.
- Next, move the cursor to the “New” icon. It is used to generate new migration endpoints.
- Next, you need to select IMAP from the next page.
- In the “Configure IMAP Migration” page, input ‘imap.gmail.com’ in the “IMAP server” settings option.
- Tip: Make sure the rest of the default settings remain the same.
- Click the “Next” button and establish a connection between Gmail and the MS O365 account.
- After the two accounts have been successfully linked, the “Enter General Information” dialog box will appear.
- Just type a suitable name for the migration endpoint, then keep the next two boxes in a row. Then click the “New” button.
Step 3: You need to run the migration batch processing
This step is very useful when you need to move multiple Google mailboxes to Office 365 at the same time. Read the following steps:
- Open the Exchange Management Center with the help of a browser.
- After opening, select “Exchange” from the left pane.
- Next, select the recipient and click on the migration option.
- Click the New(+) button and choose “Migrate to Exchange Online” from the drop-down menu.
- Select IMAP Migration >> Next.
- On the next page, click the “Browse” button and upload the migration file.
- Next, O365 will check the file based on several factors, for example, the file must be of type CSV and the number of rows must be equal to or less than 50,000 or even more. If the file does not follow any parameters, an error message will be generated. Otherwise, all Gmail mailboxes will be displayed on the screen.
- Click the Next button.
- In the “Set Migration Endpoint” section, you need to select the migration endpoint you created earlier.
- Select the default value from the IMAP migration configuration page and click Next.
- This is the most interesting part when you need to provide a relevant name for the migration batch. If you want to remove multiple folders from the export task, you just need to type the folder name in the “Exclude folder” box. Then click Next.
- On the “Start Batch” page, execute each instruction in turn.
- Select the Browse button to share the exported report with sub-users. Alternatively, the user can go to the “Properties” option and view the complete file.
- You need to select “Automatically start batch processing” and then click the “New” button to start the Google import process into Office 365.
How to import Google Apps email / contacts / calendar into Office 365 account?
The manual solution is only used to import Gmail emails into O365. However, contacts and calendars also play an important role and need to be migrated. Although there is no manual method to directly migrate Google email, calendar, contacts and other data directly to Office 365 in batch. Therefore, users can use an automated solution called G Suite for Office 365 migration.
This utility can seamlessly transfer Google Apps emails, calendars and contacts to MS O365 mailboxes in minutes without errors. The user does not need to go through long steps in the software. With just a few clicks, the rest of the migration process will be completed automatically. Furthermore, the tool’s filter options are of great help to users in case of selective data migration. If users aren’t willing to import Google to Office 365, use this tool, which is simple and convenient.